Researching Lilac Girls my historical novel due out next spring from Ballantine Books, I had to spend some time with the doctors below. Digging into the activities of Herta Oberheuser, Fritz Fischer and Karl Gebhardt helped me understand the full extent of their crimes against humanity.
Herta Oberheuser is one of the main characters in the novel. One of the few female doctors at Ravensbruck Concentration Camp for Women, north of Berlin, she headed up the Revier, the camp clinic where the experiments were performed. She not only assisted Gebhardt and Fischer during the operations, she was responsible for follow up are, described by the survivors of the experiments as minimal, refusing to provide water and pain medication.
A major in the Waffen SS and Assistant Physician to Dr. Gebhardt at the Hospital at Hohenlychen, Fischer acted as lead surgeon during many of the experimental operations. He lost an arm at the front and was one of the few doctors at the trial to show remorse for his actions.
Dr. Karl Gebhard,Medical Superintendent of the Hohenlychen Sanatorium, Consulting Surgeon of the Waffen-SS, Chief Surgeon in the Staff of the Reich Physician SS and Police, and personal physician to Heinrich Himmler, spearheaded the sulfanamide operations. Having been accused by Hitler’s personal physician of failing to use sulfa drugs to save Hitler’s friend and creator of the final solution, Reinhard Heydrich, Gebhardt tried to salvage his reputation by replicating traumatic injuries in the legs of young prisoners and introducing tetanus bacteria. If the girls died when treated with sulfa, it proved Gebahrdt’s case.
Karl Brandt, Adolf Hitler’s escort physician and member of Hitler’s inner circle.
Officially called United States of America v.Karl Brandt et al, The Doctor’s Trial was the first of 12 trials for war crimes of German doctors after WWII. The United States held the trial in Nuremberg, Germany (their occupation zone) after the end of World War II. These trials were not held before the International Military Tribunal,as the previous trial in which Hermann Goring and others were tried, but before US military courts, in the same rooms at the Palace of Justice.
Three of the 23 defendants were not doctors–Viktor Brack, Rudolf Brandt and Wolfram Sievers were Nazi officials. All defendants were accused of having been involved in human experiments and mass murder perpetrated under the guise of euthanasia.
Oberheuser, Fischer and Gephardt were found guilty of crimes against humanity. Herta Oberheuser was sentenced to twenty years in prison. Fischer was sentenced to life in prison and Gebhardt was executed by hanging on June 2, 1948.
Here are the other defendants in the trial:
Georg August Weltz Lieutenant Colonel, Medical Service, of the Air Force and Chief of the Institute for Aviation Medicine in Munich
Wolfram Sievers, Colonel in the SS; Reich Manager of the Ahnenerbe Society and Director of its Institute for Military Scientific Research and Deputy Chairman of the Managing Board of Directors of the Reich Research Council
Oskar Schröder, Colonel General Medical Service, Chief of Staff of the Inspectorate of the Medical Service of the Luftwaffe and Chief of the Medical Service of the Luftwaffe
Konrad Schafer, Doctor on the Staff of the Institute for Aviation Medicine in Berlin
Siegfried Ruff
Director of the Department for Aviation Medicine at the German Experimental Institute for Aviation and First Lieutenant in the Medical Service of the Air Force; still researching and publishing in the field of aviation as late as 1989
Paul Rostock Chief Surgeon of the Surgical Clinic in Berlin, Surgical Adviser to the Army and Chief of the Office for Medical Science and Research under the defendant Karl Brandt, Reich Commissioner for Health and Sanitation
Gerhard Rose, Brigadier General, Medical Service of the Air Force, Vice President, Chief of the Department for Tropical Medicine, and Professor of the Robert Koch Institute and Hygienic Adviser for Tropical Medicine to the Chief of the Medical Service of the Luftwaffe
Hans Wolfgang Romberg
Doctor on the Staff of the Department for Aviation Medicine at the German Experimental Institute for Aviation 
Helmut Poppendick, Senior Colonel in the SS, Chief of the Personal Staff of the Reich Physician SS and Police (Chef des Persönlichen Stabes des Reichsarztes SS und Polizei)
Adolf Pokorny Physician, Specialist in Skin and Venereal Diseases
Joachim Mrugowsky, Senior Colonel in the Waffen SS, Chief Hygienist of the Reich Physician SS and Police and Chief of the Hygienic Institute of the Waffen SS 
Waldemar Hoven Hauptsturmführer (Captain) in the Waffen SS; and Chief Doctor of the Buchenwald concentration camp
Siegfried Handloser Colonel General, Medical Service, Medical Inspector of the Army and Chief of the Medical Services of the Armed Forces 
Karl Genzken, Gruppenführer in the SS, Lieutenant General in the Waffen SS and Chief of the Medical Department of the Waffen SS 
Rudolf Brandt, Colonel in the Allgemeine SS; Personal Administrative Officer to Reichsführer-SS Himmler and Ministerial Counselor and Chief of the Ministerial Office in the Reich Ministry of the Interior
Karl Brandt Personal physician to Adolf Hitler, Lieutenant General in the SS, Reich Commissioner for Health and Sanitation and member of the Reich Research Council (Reichsforschungsrat)
Viktor Brack, Senior Colonel in the SS and Major in the Waffen SS and Chief Administrative Officer in the Chancellery of the Führer of the NSDAP 
Kurt Blome Deputy Reich Health Leader and Plenipotentiary for Cancer Research in the Reich Research Council
